The proliferation of Internet activity has generated tremendous growth for advertising on the Internet. Typically, advertisers (e.g. buyers of ad space) and online publishers (sellers of ad space) have agreements with one or more advertising networks (ad networks), which provide for serving an advertiser's banner or ad across multiple publishers, and concomitantly provide for each publisher having access to a large number of advertisers. Ad networks (which may also manage payment and reporting) may also attempt to target certain Internet consumers with particular advertisements to increase the likelihood that the consumer will take an action with respect to the ad. From an advertiser's perspective, effective targeting is important for achieving a high return on investment (ROI).
Online advertising markets exhibit undesirable inefficiencies when buyers and sellers are unable to transact. For instance, although a publisher may be subscribed to many ad networks, and one or more of those ad networks may transact inventory with other ad networks, only one of the ad networks to which the publisher is subscribed will be involved in selling (e.g. auctioning or guaranteeing delivery) a given ad space for the publisher. The publisher, or a gatekeeper used by the publisher, selects or prioritizes which ad network (or advertiser having a direct agreement with the publisher) will serve the impression for a given ad request.
Further, in online display advertising, advertisers may wish to target broad consumer segments (e.g. California consumers) or specific consumer sub-segments (e.g. males of ages 20-34 in California browsing finance pages). Advertisers need the ability to specify succinctly their values for and exposure (e.g. number of ad views) to various consumer segments, from broad to narrow.
Further, certain segments of the user population often provide word-of-mouth advocacy for an advertiser or publisher and there is no effective means for rewarding product advocate consumers because advertisers lack the ability to track and influence user behavior in real-time. Beyond interaction with a displayed advertisement, advertisers lack an effective means to influence and reward desired behaviors of users such as their presence or advocacy. Simplistic coupon models are of limited interest to users because they are old and stale, and thus suffer from a declining population of users.
Driven by the shift from broadcast to interactive media, almost every aspect of advertising is being automated, including its sale, delivery, and measurement of performance. Moving away from the real estate metaphor of buying space, advertisers may now buy highly specific contextual events like “male consumer visits sports page on the weekend,” or may buy more general bundles of contextual events. As a result, advertisers need more flexible and expressive ways to describe their ad campaign goals in terms of users' offline actions as well as users' online actions.